


To Sketch This Moment In History

by VixenRose1996



Series: Wind at my Fingertips [2]
Category: Constantine (TV), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Behrad is an artist, Episode: s04e03 Dancing Queen, Gen, No one seems to be writing Behrad fanfiction, One Shot, This take place in the Behrad 2.0 Timeline, brief mention of child abuse, so I decided to do it myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22821997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VixenRose1996/pseuds/VixenRose1996
Summary: All of the other Legends had at least one of his sketches. Nate framed the drawing Behrad had done of his friend dressed as Indiana Jones and put it on his desk in the library. Sara would sometimes hang a stray piece of his that been left lying around on the fridge.  He was pretty sure Ray kept an entire folder of his doodles and Behrad’s heart always swelled whenever he saw Mick tuck one of his sketches into a manuscript like a bookmark.But Constantine didn’t have one.Not yet, at least.Or: that scene from Dancing Queen where Zari gave John that photo, but with Behrad 2.0 instead of Zari 1.0.
Relationships: John Constantine & Behrad Tomaz
Series: Wind at my Fingertips [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1654756
Comments: 22
Kudos: 79





	To Sketch This Moment In History

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of feelings for Behrad, okay !?!?!?
> 
> Since no one else seems to be writing Behrad fanfics and I needed a mental break from my main fanfic, I decided to write on myself.
> 
> More will likely follow; I may turn it into a series.

There were many things -habits, personality quirks, pet peeves- that the Legends, different as they were, all collectively shared; sometimes, after a close call on a mission or after a nightmare about one of the villains they’ve faced (usually Kuasa, standing over him as he lay terrified and in pain in the street, demanding that he give her the Air Tormen), Behrad would lay awake in bed and list them all, whispering into the quiet darkness so only Gideon hear.

  1. Stubborn as hell and refuses to take the easiest route to do anything.
  2. Addicted to chocolate, be it in the form of cake or rum.
  3. Unable to walk into any bar anywhere without inevitably getting into a fistfight.



The list would go on and on until the repetition eventually lulled him to sleep. The length of the list varied from night to night, but one that was always on there was:

> Distant from, or having no, close family. 

Sometimes it was #5 and sometimes it was #17 and sometimes #23, but it was always on there and Behrad was no exception. He loved his parents, of course, he admired all they had accomplished in their respective careers and was thankful for all they’d done for him… which was why he felt like such a horrible person, such a _spoiled brat_ , for resenting them at times. 

All the tutors, all the extracurriculars, and all the pressure to succeed piled on his shoulders since he was older enough to recognize that the squiggles on the pages of books were letters and numbers. Tutors for the hard sciences on Mondays and Thursdays, foreign language instructions on Tuesday, music lessons on Sunday, and soccer practice on Wednesday and Saturday. With a life so busy, was it any wonder Behrad got really good at faking being sick just so he could get some time to relax. 

It wasn’t that he was stupid or that he hated learning! No, maybe Behrad wasn’t Ray, Stein, or Nate, but he always did excellent in school and was smart enough to take care of Gideon, which was far more impressive than passing any dumb test! It was more that after hearing-

> _“Study hard, Aziz-e delam; Don’t you want to grow up to be a successful doctor/lawyer/scientist/business?”_

-a couple of thousand times, it was enough to him hate the very idea of rigid, formalized education. 

Because… No!

No, he did not!

You see, ever since Baby Behrad got his hands on his first set of crayons, he wanted to be an artist. He wanted to draw and paint and sculpt with play-doh; hell, as a little kid, he spent whatever free time he had designing cities entire cities out of legos on his playroom floor. But he was never able to finish his project; no, he always had tutoring in geometry or piano practice, or french instruction and by the time he finished all the progress he’d made on Behrad-topolis would have been cleaned up by his nanny. 

So Behrad ambled through life, attending his lessons and getting perfect grades and saying, _‘Yes, of course, I’m excited for business school,_ ’ whenever anyone asked and forcing himself smile sweetly at all the right people, because, at the very least, he understood that he as the baby of the family and the only son, great things were expected of him and his parents didn’t deserve the gossip that would come if he was a failure. Still, there were so many times where he bitterly wished that his parents directed some of that energy towards his sister.

Ah, Zari…. The famous Dragon Girl who always seemed to have time for everyone else in the world but her own baby brother.

Unless, of course, it was to use him as a prop in one of her publicity stunts. He still wondered how many new followers streaming his high school graduation had gotten her.

Taking all that into account, it was no surprise that Behrad look the opportunity to do something for himself for the first time in his life, even if that opportunity involved nearly getting killed by a woman who could control water, stealing the family heirloom to prevent said woman from going after his parents, bonding with said family heirloom, and then running off with a rag-tag group time travelers to become a superhero. 

What else was he going to do? 

Go back to Wharton and spend any time he wasn’t in lectures getting high so he could attempt to ignore the oppressive loneliness that followed him like his own personal black cloud?

It was, without a doubt, the best decision of his life and, through thick, thin, and extremely weird, Behrad never once regretted it. He loved his team; he loved sparring with Sara (even if she kicked his ass every time), loved helping Ray with his inventions, loved making random mischief with Nate, and loved Mick’s gruff affection that manifested in rough slaps to back, nicknames, and... _odd_ pieces of advice. He missed Jax and Amaya every day, sometimes still expecting to see them wandering the halls of the Waverider, and his heart still ached whenever something reminded him of Stein. 

Then there was John Constantine.

Don’t get him wrong, Constantine was cool! He had magic and an accent and killed a dragon! He also saved Sara, something Behrad would forever be grateful for. But that wasn’t to say he liked everything about him either, because he also had hard, tired eyes, seemingly permanent stubble, and always stank of cigarettes and whatever liquor they had stashed on the ship. For every neat, magical do-dad he had laying around, tempting Behrad to poke at it, Constantine had a dozen sharp quips, six insults, and at least three crudes innuendoes, usually about himself but sometimes about others. 

So, yeah, it was annoying to find picked frog eyes and diced bat spleens stuffed in the fridge between the eggs and the strawberry jam, especially since Behrad once got high and nearly ate dehydrated possum livers. Not a good day…

And, yes, it made him **upset** when Constantine would blow off Sara’s attempts to involve him in the team’s various hijinks and, yes, it made him **mad** to see the hurt that would flash across Ray’s face when his attempts to bond with the warlock were heartlessly rebuffed. Sure, Mick wasn’t exactly the most emotionally sensitive man alive either, but that was different!

Still, it was impossible to hate someone so… _sad_. Constantine was a man who was broken and bitter and bruised and who hated life only slightly less than he hated himself. Sitting in that pub, ignoring the ‘Are you even old enough to be in here, Sport?’ Behrad had watched a man he knew was capable of amazingly good things attempt to erase his own existence.

Sure, in that moment, watching the ‘Ball-Kick Paradox’ unfold before his eyes was hilarious… right up until Behrad realized that he just watched Constantine attempt to commit suicide.

_‘Could his self-loathing really be that bad?’_

Behrad didn’t know and was pretty sure that asking would get him turned into a gerbil, but he still wanted to help the Brit.

So that is what led to be here, standing just out of sight of the parlor, and clutching the drawing he’d spent the past three hours working on; usually, he drew cartoons or caricatures and the more realistic style had given him some trouble. Plus, he wanted it to be perfect. All of the other Legends had at least one of his sketches. Nate framed the drawing Behrad had done of his friend dressed as Indiana Jones and put it on his desk in the library. Sara would sometimes hang a stray piece of his that been left lying around on the fridge. He was pretty sure Ray kept an entire folder of his doodles and Behrad’s heart always swelled whenever he saw Mick tuck one of his sketches into a manuscript like a bookmark. 

But Constantine didn’t have one.

Not yet, at least.

It seemed like he didn’t have a lot of things. 

“Hey, you got a minute?” Behrad asked, rounding the bend of the galley and stepping into view. “I just wanted to say-”

“About the pub? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, if you're here to have some weepy, heart-to-heart, end-of-the-mission hug-fest where you tell me that my problems are your problems and that happiness is just one friend away and all that bollocks, don't bother, yeah?” Constantine snarled from his perch on the parlor steps, looking very much like a deeply haggard, half-dead bird. “Now, I like you well enough, Sport, but you don’t know me!”

“Well, I’d like to,” Behrad replied automatically before plowing forward, if only to ignore the heaviness that formed in his gut when John all but reeled back in surprise. “Besides, I’d never do that; it would be lame.”

“Yeah, it would,” Constantine grunted. “So why are you here then?”

“To give you this. Here-,” he held out the folded drawing, which the older man took; an action that gave Behrad a good look at the many small, round, white from age, burn scars that dotted his forearms. Knowing what Behrad now did about Constantine’s father, he had a pretty good idea where they came from. He bounced on the balls of his feet nervously, “-I like doodling and I thought that maybe...you’d like to have something…”

He was babbling and he knew it, uncertain of what Constantine’s reaction would be as the older man unfolded the paper. But when John’s face split into a slow smile and looked up at him with softer eyes than he’d ever seen on the man, Behrad knew he’d done something good.

“Thank you, B,” John said. “You’re a good lad.”

Heat rushed to Behrad’s face and the tips of his face; he ducked his face to hide the broad grin that split across his face and gave an _‘aww, shuck, don’t worry about it’_ wave. He turned to leave, wondering how much gloating he could get away with when he told Ray he’d manage to have a bonding with John when he heard the older man speak up again. 

“I hope you survive me.”

**Author's Note:**

> I based some of this off of what a male Muslim friend of mine has told me about his family life. He's kinda similar to Behrad in that he came from a wealthy family and is both the youngest child and only son. He has two older sisters, though.


End file.
